III.
A sense of helplessness in the hands of fate is in some sort conducive to courage. Doubtless many an act of valor which has won the world's applause was precipitated in a degree by desperation and the lack of an alternative. The appearance of stolidity with which the cluster of witnesses—those whose testimony was yet to be given as well as those who had told the little they knew—noted the uncontrolled agitation, the wild eyes, the hysteric sobs, with which Narcissa Hanway was ushered into the contracted apartment where the inquest was in progress, had no correlative calmness of mind or heart. What haphazard accusation might not result from her fear, or her desire to shield another, or the mere undisciplined horror of the place and the fact! When one dreads the sheer possibilities, the extremes of terror are reached. More than one of the bearded, unkempt, hardy mountaineers, trudging back and forth in the sheltered space beneath the loft, steadily chewing their quids of tobacco and eying the rain, would have fled incontinently, had there been any place to run to out of reach of the constable, who was particularly brisk to-day, participating in exercises of so unusual an interest. The girl's brother, standing beside the door after she had passed within, was unconscious of a certain keen covert scrutiny of which he was the subject. He had a square determined face, dark hair, slow gray eyes, and a tall powerful frame; he held his head downward, his hand on the door, his even teeth set in the intensity of his effort to distinguish the voices within. There had been some secret speculation as to whether the man were altogether unknown to the brother and sister, such deep feeling she had evinced, such coercion he had exerted to induce her to give her testimony. Still, the girl was a mere slip of a thing, unused to horrors; and as to recalcitrant witnesses, they all knew the jail had a welcome for the silent until such time as they might find a voice. Nevertheless, though his urgency had been in the stead of the constable's stronger measures, they eyed him askance as he stood and sought to listen, with his hand on the door. The old woman turned around, her arms falling to her sides with a sort of flounce of triumph, her eyes twinkling beneath the shining spectacles set upon her brow among the limp ruffles of her thrust-back sunbonnet, a laugh of satisfaction widening her wrinkled face. "Thar now!" she chuckled, "Nar'sa jes' set it down she wouldn't testify, an' crossed her heart an' hoped she'd fall dead fust. But, Ben, we beat her that time!" and she chuckled anew.
The man answered not a word, and listened to the tumult within.
It is seldom, doubtless, that the patience of a coroner's jury is subjected to so strong a strain. But the information which had so far been elicited was hardly more than the bare circumstance which the body presented,—a man had ridden here, a stranger, and he was dead. If the girl knew more than this, it would necessitate some care in the examination to secure the facts. She was young, singularly willful and irresponsible, and evidently overcome by grief, or fear, or simply horror. When she was asked to look at the face of the stranger, she only caught a glimpse of it, as if by accident, and turned away, pulling her white bonnet down over her face, and declaring that she would not. "I hev viewed him wunst, an' I won't look at him again," she protested, with a burst of sobs.
"Now set down in this cheer, daughter, an' tell us what ye know about it all,—easy an' quiet," said the coroner in a soothing, paternal strain.
"Oh, nuthin', nuthin'!" exclaimed the girl, throwing herself into the chair in the attitude of an abandonment of grief.
"Air ye cryin' 'kase ye war 'quainted with him ennywise?" demanded one of the jurymen, with a quickening interest. He was a neighbor; that is, counting as propinquity a distance of ten miles.
The girl lifted her head suddenly. "I never seen him till yestiddy," she protested steadily. "I be a heap apter ter weep 'kase my 'quaintances ain't dead!" She gave him a composed, sarcastic smile, then fell to laughing and crying together.
To the others the discomfiture of their confrère was the first touch of comedy relief in the tragic situation. They cast at one another a glance of appreciation trenching on a smile, and the abashed questioner drew out a plug of tobacco, and with a manner of preoccupation gnawed a bit from it; then replaced it in his pocket, with a physical contortion which caused the plank on which the jury were seated to creak ominously, to the manifest anxiety of the worthies ranged thereon.
"How did you happen to see the man?" he asked, as if he had perceived no significance in her previous answer.
"'Kase I didn't happen ter be blind," her half-muffled voice replied. Her arm was thrown over the back of the chair, and her face was hidden on her elbow.
The coroner interposed quickly: "Where were you goin', an' what did you see?"
She sobbed aloud for a moment. Then ensued an interval of silence. Suddenly the interest of the subject seemed to lay hold upon her, and she began to speak very rapidly, lifting her white tear-stained face, and pushing her bonnet back on her rough curling auburn hair:—
"I war a-blackberryin', thar bein' only a few lef' yit, an' I went fur an' furder yit from home; an' ez I kem out'n the woods over yon," half rising, and pointing with a free gesture, "I viewed—or yit I 'lowed I viewed—the witch-face through a bunch o' honey locust, the leaves bein' drapped a'ready, they bein' always the fust o' the year ter git bare. An' stiddier leavin' it be, I sot my bucket o' berries at the foot o' a tree', an started down the slope todes the bluff, ter make sure an' view it clar o' the trees." The girl paused, her eyes widening, her voice faltering, her breath coming fast. "An' goin' swift, some hawgs, stray, half grown, 'bout twenty shoats feedin' in the woods—my rustlin' in the bushes skeered 'em I reckon—they sot out to run, possessed by the devil, like them the Scriptur' tells about." She paused again, panting, her hand to her heart.
The disaffected juryman turned to one side, recrossing his legs, and spitting disparagingly on the ground. "She can't swear them hawgs war possessed by the devil," he said in a low tone to his next neighbor.
"Oh, why not," exclaimed the girl, "when we know so many men air possessed by the devil,—why not them shoats, bein' jes' without clothes, an' without the gift o' speech to mark the diff'unce!"
She paused again, and the coroner, standing a trifle back of her chair, shook his head at the obstructive juryman, and asked her in a commonplace voice what the hogs had to do with it.
"That's what I wanter know!" she cried, half turning in her chair to look up at him. "I started 'em, an' I be at the bottom o' it all, ef it's like I think,—me, yearnin' ter look at the old witch-face! The hawgs run through the woods like fire on dry grass, an' I be 'feared they skeered the stranger man's horse—he had none whenst I seen him, though. I hearn loud talkin', or hollerin', a cornsiderable piece off, an' then gallopin' hoofs"—
"More horses than one, do you think?" demanded the coroner.
"Oh, how kin I swear to that? I seen none. Fur when I got thar, this man war lyin' in the herder's trail, bruised and bloody—oh, like ye see—an' his eyes opened; an' he gin a sort o' gasp whenst I tuk his han'—an' he war dead. An' I skeered the hawgs, an' they skeered his horse, an' he killed him; an' I be 'sponsible fur it all, an' I wisht ye'd hang me fur it quick, an' be done with it!"
She burst into sobs once more, and hid her face on her arm on the back of the chair. Then, suddenly lifting her head, she resumed: "I jes' called and called Ben, an' bein' he hain't never fur off, he hearn me, an' kem. An' then he rid fur the neighbors, an' kem down the valley arter you-uns," with a side glance at the coroner. "An' he lef' me a shootin'-iron, in case of a fox, or a wolf, or suthin' kem along. 'Bout sunset the neighbors kem. An' till then I sot thar keepin' watch, an' a-viewin' the witch-face 'crost the Cove, plumb till the sun went down."
She bowed her head again on her arm, and a momentary silence ensued. Then the coroner, clearing his throat, said reassuringly, "Thar ain't nuthin' in the witch-face, nohow. It's jes' a notion. Man and boy, I have knowed that hillside fur forty year, an' I never could see no witch-face; it's been p'inted out ter me a thousand times."
She looked at him in dumb amazement for a moment; then broke out, "Waal, what would ye think ef ye hed seen, like me, the witch-face shining in the darkest night, nigh on ter midnight, like the ole 'oman had lighted her a candle somewhars,—jes' shinin', an' grinnin', an' mockin', plain ez daybreak? That's what I hev viewed—an' I 'low ter view it agin—oh, I do, I do!"
He looked at her hard, but he did not say what he thought, and the faces of the jurymen, which had implied a strong exception to his declaration of skepticism touching the existence of the ominous facial outline on the hillside, underwent a sudden change of expression. She was hardly responsible, they considered, and her last incredible assertion had gone far to nullify the effect of her previous testimony. She was overcome by the nervous shock, or had told less than she knew and was still concealing somewhat, or was so credulous and plastic and fanciful as to be hardly worthy of belief. She was dismissed earlier than she had dared to hope: and with this deterioration of the testimony of the witness who was nearest the time and place of the disaster, the jury presently went to work to evolve out of so slender a thread of fact and so knotty a tangle of possibility their verdict.
For a long time, it seemed to the curious without, and to the agitated, nervous witnesses peering through the unchinked logs of the wall, they sat on their comfortless perch, half crouching forward, and chewed, and discussed the testimony. There were frequent intervals of silence, and in one of these Con Hite was disturbed to see the sketch of the "witch-face" once more passed from hand to hand. They grew to have a harried, baited look; and after a time, the rain having slackened, they came out in a body, and walked to and fro quite silently in the clearing, chewing their quids and their knotty problem, with apparently as much chance of getting to the completion of the one as of the other. They were evidently refreshed, however, by the change of posture and scene, for they soon resumed the subject and were arguing anew as they paused upon the bluff, their gestures wonderfully distinct, drawn upon the sea of mist that filled the valley below and the air above. It revealed naught of the earth, save here and there a headland, as it were, thrusting out its dark, narrow, attenuated demesne into the impalpable main. Further and further one might mark this semblance of a coast-line as the vapor grew more tenuous, till far away the series of shadowy gray promontories alternating with the colorless inlets was as vague of essence as the land of a dream. Near at hand, a cucumber-tree, with its great broad green leaves and its deep red cones, leaning over the rocks, and spanning this illusive gray landscape from the zenith to the immediate foreground, gave the only touch of color to the scenic simulacrum in many a gradation of neutral tone. The jurymen hovered about under the boughs for a time, and then came back, still harassed and anxious, to their den, with perhaps some new question of doubt. For those without could perceive that once more they were crowding about the bier and talking together in knots. Again they called in the country physician who had testified earlier, an elderly personage, singularly long and thin and angular, but who had a keen, intent, clever face and the accent of an educated man. He seemed to reiterate some information in a clear, concise manner, and when he came out it was evident that he considered his utility here at an end, for he made straight for his horse and saddle.
A sudden sensation supervened among the outsiders,—a flutter, and then a breathless suspense; for within the inclosure, barred with the heavy shadows of the logs of the walls alternating with the misty intervals, could be seen the figures of the seven, successively stooping at the foot of the bier to sign each his name to the inquisition at last drawn up.
One by one they came slowly out, looking quite exhausted from their long restraint, the unwonted mental exercitations, and the nervous strain. Then it was developed, to the astonishment and disappointment of the little crowd, tingling with excitement and anxiety, that this document simply set forth the fact that at an inquisition holden on Witch-Face Mountain, Kildeer County, before Jeremiah Flaxman, coroner, upon the body of an unknown man, there lying dead, the jurors whose names were subscribed thereto, upon their oaths, did say that he came to his death from concussion of the brain consequent upon being thrown or dragged from his horse by means or by persons to the jury unknown.
There was a palpable dismay on Constant Hite's expressive face. He had hoped that the verdict might be death by accident. Others had expected the implication of horse-thieves, of whose existence the jury being of the neighborhood were well advised, and the disappearance of the man's horse might well suggest this explanation. The coroner would return this inquisition to the criminal court together with a list of the material witnesses. Thus the matter was left as undecided as before the inquest, the jeopardy, the terrors of circumstantial evidence, all still impending, dark with doom, like the black cloud which visibly overshadowed the landscape.